I have never felt so un-Christmassy in the gardens as I do this year. I dare say that the fact that I have very little in the way of gardens to play with at the moment and that what I have is covered in sea of mud and slime is not helping my rather gloomy frame of mind. The drive is mud covered, the temporary paths also, there are no lawns......all mud, mud, mud. There are no mistle thrushes singing in the holly trees, as they have all been ripped out and the new water gardens have all sprung leaks and are nearly empty. Daisy, my jack russell, drags herself round the site, mud up to her arm pits (leg pits?). Gamely visiting her friends the builders but eventually coming to a halt after lunch when a mixture of mud and cement powder finally makes her seize up when she has to be extracted by kind hands and deposited, a furry gargoyle, in my shed.

I am having to scour the estate for holly trees in berry so that I can commence the Christmas wreath making. I am not in the mood this year. Holly hurts so much and wreaths spattered with blood are not very jolly. I have to be quite secretive about the wreath making for if I am discovered people say 'Oh could you make me one' and so it continues and I end up making twenty and am never offered anything in return. I am actually quite generous at Christmas. I am happy to give away stuff I have grown but I am not spilling my blood for anyone who is not an employer this year.

The promise of being able to plant up some areas in the New Year is very enticing. I understand that in reality it won't happen until March or April but I am having fun going to nurseries buying plants and having them delivered now so that I can surround my sheds with trees and shrubs and herbaceous beauties and plot and plan where they are going to be situated. I have yet to commit a plan to paper and I think it unlikely that I will do so. It's all in my head and I am never knowingly wrong. I am about to construct a large sleeper bed and fill it with soil so that can take delivery of all the bare rooted trees I ordered in October. I have asked for irrigation points to be installed all round the garden, especially in areas, which are very sunny and where there are to be plantations of trees and shrubs which if we have even a moderately sunny summer will require masses of watering for probably two seasons. I am planning to buy some large pieces of topiary from a nursery near London and once these are in position I will feel much, much happier.

My two old greenhouses are satisfyingly full. I have saved and potted up masses of this years plants and taken masses of cuttings. My autumn bulb order was lost in the post and I only discovered this when the order failed to arrive by mid November. The company managed to provide three quarters of the original order and the bulbs arrived towards the end of the month. I was quite pleased that not everything arrived, as it was too late in the season and I was not in the mood for planting bulbs, something I dislike doing, anyway. What little space I had in the greenhouse has been filled with hippeastrums, narcissus and eventually the hyacinths will appear but I fear they will not be in flower for Christmas this year................I just knew it was going to be a bad month.

Next year is going to be The Year of Years when everything will come together and all will be well.